Wanted (Flick Carter Book 1) (37 page)

‘Entrance is just around the corner,’ Barnes said.

They reached the corner, and Corporal Barnes edged his rifle out into the open. Shots rang out and he pulled it back quickly. ‘Shit!’ he muttered. Barnes rummaged inside his armour and pulled out a small mirror. He held it out so that he could see around the corner, ‘Got you, you bastard.’

Barnes threw the mirror out into the open. More shots rang out as he ducked out from the cover of the wall, firing his own rifle. The shooting stopped and he motioned to Adam, ‘Quick, come on before any more turn up.’

They rounded the corner, made it to the door and slipped inside.

Adam stopped abruptly. ‘Don’t shoot!’ he cried. He was looking straight into fifteen gun muzzles pointing right at him.

Slowly Adam raised his hands.

For the first time in weeks, Flick didn’t have bad dreams. Her hand reached over to Shea and stroked the hairs on his chest. She smiled and opened her eyes, looking at the tribal tattoo on his arm, wondering at the significance of the swirls and lines. The grey pre-dawn light formed a perfect semicircle in the tunnel mouth and she realised where she was.

Crap
.

‘Shea, wake up, it’s time!’ She shook him until he stirred.

‘Mmmmf?’ He sat bolt upright.

Flick kissed him, ‘Morning sleepy head. It’s time to go and get killed.’ It was the first morning since forever that she’d woken up happy, and it was likely to be her last. She should be scared, terrified even, but she was strangely calm.

‘Do we have to? I was so starting to enjoy life too!’ Shea lay back and, reaching out, pulled her towards him.
 

She was tempted. It would be so easy just to snuggle in his arms, let the day pass and perhaps it would all go away. But she pushed away from him. There were too many lives depending on what she did right here, right now.

Shea shook his head. ‘Why does crap like this happen just when things start looking up?’

‘I know, it sucks doesn’t it?’ Flick replied. She gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Back in a mo…’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I have to pee and poo. And I’m not doing it here!’

‘Right, fair enough!’

When Flick got back, Shea had packed their things and decanted the cold stew into bowls. He handed one to her.

‘Thanks.’

They ate in silence.

‘So how do we play this?’ Shea asked when they had finished.

Good question
. Flick realised she really hadn’t thought this far ahead. She’d never expected to get this far. Never expected to still be alive. Never expected to have her friends kidnapped by the man she feared most in the whole world. Never expected to have to rescue them. Never expected to have to figure out
how
to rescue them.

She said the first thing that came into her head.

‘Well, we don’t know where they are for sure, but… We hop over the fence, run across the field until we get to the buildings. Then we sneak along, peek through all the windows until we find where our friends are, bust in, overwhelm the guards, release them, run back here, climb back over the fence and away. Easy!’

Surprisingly it seemed to make some sense.

Shea opened his mouth as if to say something, but then thought better of it. Instead he wiped the last of his bread around the bowl and popped it into his mouth. He chewed on it for a moment before swallowing.

‘Yeah, easy,’ he said.

Now that she’d said it, the enormity of what they had to do struck her and she panicked.

‘I can’t do it! They’re going to die!
We’re
going to die!’ she squeaked.

‘No, we’re not!’ Shea grabbed hold of her and looked her in the eye. ‘We can do this, you and me. One step at a time. It’s going to be all right!’

Deep breaths.

She calmed down. ‘Yeah, you’re right. The enormity of it all just struck me, that’s all.’ She breathed in and out slowly and deliberately. She smiled. ‘One step at a time, eh?’

‘We’ve got our knives,’ he said, ‘and you’ve got your arrows. You’re a good shot, and maybe we won’t even need them.’

Flick slung her pack and quiver over her shoulders, checked the knives in her belt and grabbed the bow. Shea checked the knives in his own belt. ‘Ready?’ she asked.

Shea nodded. He leaned over and kissed her. ‘For luck,’ he said.

Flick smiled and pushed him in the direction of the tunnel entrance. ‘Let’s go.’

Now or never.

Shea released the horse from its tie down. ‘It might still be here when we get back, and if we don’t… well, it won’t be stuck here,’ he said.

They dragged their bedding up the embankment to the fence. Flick was about to throw her blanket up when Shea nudged her.

‘There,’ he said pointing further down the fence line, ‘See that post? If we go over there, it should be easier.’

Flick nodded and they moved further down.

‘Yeah, no trouble,’ he whispered, and threw his blanket up. It stuck on the top of the post. Flick threw hers up to join it.

‘I’ll go first,’ she said. ‘Give me a boost up.’

Shea cupped his hands and Flick stepped up and onto the fence. She scrabbled up and quickly reached the top. ‘It’s not too bad,’ she said. ‘Just wedge your feet into the links and don’t stop.’ Then she tested the blanket to see if the barbs had pinched their way through. ‘Seems okay,’ she called, before swinging herself over the top and dropping down on the other side. This was easy. If the rest of the day went like this, it would be a cinch.

Shea grabbed on to the wire links and heaved himself up, ‘I should have gone first,’ he muttered, ‘and made
you
give
me
a bunk up.’

‘Get on with it!’ Flick hissed. ‘You’re such a wuss!’

Shea dropped down and crouched close to the ground. ‘Get down!’ he hissed, ‘we don’t want to be spotted!’

Flick crouched down too. Why had she not thought of that herself? She started to have doubts. She looked around, but all she could see from her crouched position was grass. ‘Which way?’

Shea pointed. ‘That way. There are trees at the far side of the buildings. They’ll give us some shelter. We’ll surprise them.’

That sounded good and she grinned. ‘I hope they like surprises,’ Flick whispered. ‘Come on, last one there’s a sissy!’ She set off running in a low crouch across the field.

They were about halfway across when a loud, droning wail started.

Shit! We’ve been spotted!

‘It’s the alarm!’ she hissed, hesitating.

Shea tugged at her. ‘Come on, keep going, don’t stop!’ he urged.

They ran. She heard men shouting and doors slamming and running boots. When she looked up she saw people running about. There were dozens of men, pulling on jackets, waving guns about.

They’ve got guns? No one said anything about guns!

But it was as if there was a different emergency; they didn’t seem to notice two figures running across the grass. They reached the trees. Flick ran past the first tree and reached the second before she stopped.

She held her sides, panting, recovering her breath and looking around.

The droning wail continued.

‘I really thought they’d spotted us,’ she shouted above the noise, her breath coming in short spurts. ‘How many are there, do you think?’
 

There was the rat-a-tat-tat sound of gunfire in the distance.

‘Something’s certainly rattled their cage,’ Shea panted.

After a minute he said, ‘I don’t think it’s us. They’re not coming this way!’

Flick noticed that Shea had his knife in his hand, and she drew an arrow from her quiver and nocked it onto the bow. They cautiously crept towards the nearest building. As they broke the cover of the trees, there was a loud crack from somewhere above them. Flick felt a breath of wind across the side of her face. She looked up. There was a wooden tower with a man at the top of it. He was struggling to reload a rifle and gesticulate wildly at her, both at the same time.

Without thinking, she raised the bow and loosed the arrow. The guard stopped gesticulating and toppled slowly from the tower. Flick stood watching as he fell silently, her mouth open, staring. Or he might have been screaming and she just couldn’t hear it above the wailing siren. The man thudded onto the ground where he remained motionless.

Flick stood there looking at him. A man, dead, with her arrow sticking out of him.

I should get the arrow.

But she couldn’t move.

Shea pulled her into the shadow of the building and she snapped out of it. He held his thumb up.

‘I just killed a man,’ Flick shouted.

‘Good shot!’ Shea shouted back. ‘It was us or him. Come on, we have to keep going.’

She knew it was true. She had to put it out of her mind, not let it affect her. She could worry about it later if they survived, and if they didn’t, well it wouldn’t matter. Flick nocked another arrow.

The building was a large, squat affair, with no obvious windows or doors. They edged their way along the wall. The sounds of gunfire continued in the distance. There was the rat-a-tat-tat and then an answering burst. Some of the shots sounded much nearer, though most appeared to be some distance away. There was lots of shouting and the occasional scream.

They had come to the end of the building, realising that they were now exposed.

‘Hey you! Stop!’ A man in grey uniform ran towards them, pulling a gun from a holster. He stopped to take aim. The flash from the muzzle was brilliant, and Flick felt rather than heard the impact of the bullet.

FLICK FELT HERSELF being yanked back. She realised Shea had pulled her out of sight, away from the line of fire.

He held her face, looking intently into her eyes. She could see his lips moving. He was talking to her but she couldn’t hear anything.

‘I’m all right,’ she shouted. She pointed to her ears, and then she realised that Shea had his hands over them: that’s why she couldn’t hear him.

She tapped his hands. ‘I thought I’d gone deaf!’

He took his hands away and grinned. ‘Are you hurt?’

Now she felt the throbbing in her side. She looked down and saw a smear of red on her clothes. Instantly she felt faint and wobbled slightly. ‘I’m hit, she said.’

Shea looked round. ‘We’ve got to get you under cover,’ he said. He pointed at a door a little way off. ‘There. Can you make it?’

Flick looked at the door. It seemed an awfully long way away, but she nodded.

Shea put her arm around his shoulder. ‘Come on, I’ve got you,’ he said, and they made their way to the door. It wasn’t locked and they ducked inside.

The inside of the building was vast and empty. Shea propped Flick against the wall and pulled the door shut. He wedged his knife between the handle and the door frame, creating a makeshift lock. ‘That should hold them off for a few minutes at least,’ he said.

With the wall between them and the sirens, it was much quieter. Flick watched as Shea knelt down beside her and pulled her shirt up.

‘It was much better when you did that last night,’ she joked. But that sent a spasm of pain through her and she whimpered.

Shea opened his water bottle and poured some of the liquid onto Flick’s side, cleaning away the blood.

He looked up. ‘You’ll live,’ he said, ‘it’s just a scratch, although you’ll have a nice scar to tell the kids about!’

‘
If
I live that long,’ she said.

He ripped a length of material from his pack and tied it around her. ‘There, good as new. Now come on, we need to get going.’

‘My bow! I dropped my bow!’ Panic knotted her stomach as Flick realised she was defenceless.

‘We’ll get it,’ Shea said. ‘Use your knife for now.’

Shea freed his own knife from the door frame and pulled the door open. The first thing that Flick noticed was that the wailing siren had stopped. Had they cancelled their emergency now, she wondered, or were they just as sick of the noise as she was. There was the distant sound of machine gun fire, followed by an explosion, and she knew the answer.

‘What on earth is going on?’ she asked, ‘It sounds like a major invasion!’

‘I don’t know,’ Shea replied, ‘but whatever it is, it seems to have got their attention.’ He checked outside the door and beckoned her to follow. ‘We might still get out of this alive, you know.’

They crept back to the corner of the building and Shea peeped round. ‘Clear,’ he whispered.

Flick’s bow and dropped arrow were still lying on the ground, so he picked them up for her.

‘Thanks,’ she said, nocking the arrow back onto the string.

‘Let’s keep looking. They’ve got to be in one of these buildings.’ Shea said.

Shards of brick and mortar flew from the wall, peppering Flick’s face and hair.

Shit, that was close!

She spun around and loosed the arrow, which just clattered noisily to the ground. She’d missed.

But the thug wasn’t looking at her. He was looking the other way at four men in black body armour advancing on him. He raised his machine gun to fire, but instead of spouting flame and lead it fell to the ground as the man did a strange little jig in a spray of red mist. A fraction of a second later, Flick heard the sound of the gunshots.

She ducked back in shock, leaning back against the wall for a moment.

Shit! Kingsmen!

Shea started to say something, but she held up a finger and he shut up.

Realising they couldn’t stay where they were, she pointed back the way they’d come.

‘Kingsmen,’ she finally managed to say once they’d rounded the next corner. ‘Just turned a guy to pulp.’ She leaned over and threw up that morning’s leftover stew.

‘Come on,’ Shea said, ‘we’ve still got those hostages to find.’

The next building was only a few metres away, and there was a door on this side. Shea tried the handle, but it was locked.

‘No good, keep moving,’ he said.

The sounds of gunfire were getting louder. Two thugs barrelled around a corner and rushed towards them, but they didn’t seem to notice Flick or Shea, and the reason was quickly obvious; four armoured Kingsmen were chasing them. There was the loud crack of gunfire, and the two thugs dropped almost at Flick’s feet. She stood there, open mouthed in terror until Shea pulled her into the cover of a dumpster.